One of the things that we are noticing is that all the leaks and other information coming out of Chipzilla, suggests that the outfit is getting excited about the overclocking market.

A lot of the marketing buzz about Kaby Lake architecture on the desktop by focusing on overclocking performance. Chipzilla has several unlocked processors based on Kaby Lake, and they are not just at the high end.

Already overclockable Kaby Lake Core i7 and Core i5 processors have been leaked but the trend is suggesting that Intel will target cash strapped system builders with at least one unlocked Core i3 series processor, that being the dual-core processor Core i3-7350K. The retail box version will be sold for $177 which means that street pricing could end up being anywhere from $150 to $180.

The Core i3-7350K will have Hyper Threading support and is fast already with a base clock speed of 4GHz and a boost frequency of 4.2GHz. It is unclear how much overclocking you will get on top of that. But if you can get a couple of of hundred MHz with air cooling and a TDP rating of 61W as expected you could get a cost-effective chip. If it does not turn into a pile of molten plastic in your computer.

Kaby Lake is not that exciting to enthusiasts, but Intel seems to be wanting to get a few more overclockers interested at the lower end of the market. A sub-$200 part that could open overclocking to a wider audience might just work.

It is a moot point if this will do much for sales. Overclocking is useful if you know what you are doing, and most buying at that price range either don’t know what they are doing, or are too scared to try it.

While we wait for AMD to launch its first Zen-based Summit Ridge CPUs and Excavator-based 7th generation Bristol Ridge APUs, the flagship Bristol Ridge A12-9800 APU has already been overclocked by a Korean user with stock AMD Wraith CPU cooler.

While this is not the first time that A12-9800 APU benchmarks have shown up, most likely coming from the same source, this is the first time someone actually tried to overclock it and it appears that these will have a significantly higher overclocking potential compared to the earlier available Kaveri APUs.

In case you missed it, the A12-9800 APU will be the flagship SKU with 65W TDP, quad-core CPU part, working at 3.8GHz base and 4.2GHz Turbo clock, and GPU with 8 CUs and 512 Stream Processors, clocked at 1108MHz.

Earlier benchmarks showed a decent performance and bandwidth increase compared to the flagship A10-7870K Kaveri APU but now, it appears that there will be decent overclocking potential involved as well.

There will probably be plenty of these leaks as we draw closer to the official launch, scheduled for early next year, when AMD is expected to launch both Zen-based Summit Ridge CPUs and Excavator-based Bristol Ridge APUs, both sharing the same new AM4 socket.

Kaby Lake will be a better overclocker. At least this is what Intel is telling its partners right now. The successor to Skylake architecture will have two overclocking enhancements the BCLK aware V/F curve and AVX negative ratio offset.

The BCLK aware V/F curve is an adaptive voltage mode that works with BCLK and its main goal is to achieve higher clock stability.

Kaby Lake processors will be able to achieve higher frequencies at the same thermal envelope. For example, a 95W TDP Kaby Lake processor will be able to achieve a higher clock than the 95W Skylake. We expect that the successor to Intel Core i7-6700K will get to clock more than 4GHz, but not that much higher. The Turbo clock will be higher.

We expect a slight increase in the core clock as Intel had more than a year to tweak and optimize the 14nm Skylake core. Kaby Lake is a new CPU but with minor improvements and isn't a huge leap forward.

G.Skill was quite proud to note that its memory has managed to break a total of 12 overclocking records in 8 different benchmarks during Computex 2016 show, with DDR4 memory hitting impressive 5189.2MHz.

During G.Skill's 5th Annual OC World Record Stage 2016, well known overclockers like Splave, Hiwa, Dancop, Benchbros and other have managed to break quite a few world records and global first place records with various hardware and G.Skill memory, including DDR4 frequency, HWBOT Prime, as well as various 3DMark and Unigine Heaven benchmarks.

G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 memory was also a part of Kingpin's insane looking LN2 setup as well as a part of many other overclocking systems at Computex 2016 show.

The 5189.2MHz memory frequency really sounds impressive and hopefully we will see even higher records in near future.

G.Skill has announced that its Trident Z DDR4 memory has achieved a new frequency record of over 5000MHz.

The 4GB DDR4 Trident Z module was overclocked to a mind-boggling frequency of 2501.2MHz (5002.4MHz effective), under LN2, of course, and with MSI's Z170I Gaming Pro AC motherboard and Intel Skylake Core i5-6600K CPU. The culprit is a well known Toppc overclocker and this score was enough to secure him the first place on HWBOT's memory frequency list. The latency was set at 31-31-31-63 so it is obvious that the focus was on frequency and not the latency. It is also quite surprising that the overclocking was done on MSI's mini-ITX motherboard..

The 5GHz frequency was a holy grail for quite some time and it does not come as a surprise that G.Skill is quite proud that its modules were first to hit the magical mark. G.Skill's Corporate Vice President and Director of R&D, Tequila Huang said that the company is "extremely excited to achieve this great milestone together with Samsung components and MSI motherboard" and that they "will continually push hardware performance to the limits and provide enthusiasts with even more advanced products."

Previous memory frequency record on HWBOT.org of 2450.8MHz was held by Chi-Kui Lam on G.Skill's Ripjaws 4 DDR4 module, so there is certainly a pattern here. Hopefully it won't be long before we see DDR4 pushed even further.

There have been rumours that Chipzilla was leaning on motherboard vendors to pull overclocking of non-K Skylake processor capabilities from their feature lists. Now it is starting to look like it is true.

Hexus has reported that ASRock's has removed its SKY OC feature in a BIOS update that appeared yesterday.

ASRock, MSI, Biostar, ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards started putting the feature in their cards in December last year. ASRock and Biostar promoted it. Biostar even called its non-K overclocking HyperOC.

Other vendors seemed pretty certain that they would get an angry call from Chipzilla eventually and did not mention the new tech.

The performance uplift possible via this BCLK overclocking method was impressive. They could make a Core i3-6100 perform faster in Cinebench than the Core i5-4430, even when all four cores were flat out. In other tests, including gaming, these two chips were pretty much the same.

Of course that was never going to sit well with Intel as it charges rather a lot more for its i5 chips than the i3.

ASRock has updated its Intel Z170 motherboards with two tweaks; 1. Update CPU microcode to 0x76, and 2. Remove SKY OC function. It did not say why.

If you want to keep the tech there should be no pressure for you to upgrade. An earlier BIOS update from ASRock, just a fortnight ago, included a microcode to fix the Skylake complex workloads bug and otherwise there is little need for an upgrade.

You can even see the older BIOS versions on the ASRock website.

Our guess is that there will be other motherboard vendors who will be following ASRock soon.

Following the rest of motherboard manufacturers, EVGA has now released new Z170 motherboard BIOS updates that bring BCLK overclocking for Intel non-K Skylake CPUs on Z170 Express chipset based motherboards.

The list includes three EVGA Z170 Express chipset motherboards including the Z170 Classified, Z170 FTW and the Z170 Stinger.

Although it has not been stated in the forum where BIOS images are available, it is very likely that the 1.07 BIOS update for EVGA Z170 Express chipset motherboards also have the same restrictions seen before, including disabled IGP, lack of C-states, lack of Turbo mode and lower performance for AVX instructions.

Asrock has decided to join in on the fun of non-K Skylake CPU overclocking by releasing new BIOS updates that include the so called Sky OC technology feature and allow BCLK overclocking for non-K series Skylake CPUs on Asrock Z170 Express chipset based motherboards.

While BIOS updates from other motherboard manufacturers were mostly released by in-house overclockers on overclocking forums like HWBOT.org, Asrock is actually the first motherboard manufacturer that has officially released its Z170 Express chipset motherboard BIOS updates for non-K Skylake CPU overclocking at its official website. While these are official BIOS updates from Asrock, these still have the same issues and problems seen on other motherboards with similar BIOS, including the disabled onboard IGP as well as disabled CPU Turbo Ratio and C-State, as this is a common problem when BCLK overclocking is enabled on any Skylake CPU.

ASRock has released BIOS updates for a total of 21 different motherboards and all of them can be found over at Asrock's official website. With these BIOS updates, Asrock has joined the likes of Asus, MSI and Supermicro with non-K Skylake overclocking ability and we are still missing some major players like Gigabyte and/or EVGA.

Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido has broken three 3DMark World single card records by pushing the EVGA Geforce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition to 2200MHz for the GPU on LN2.

Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido is a well known name in the overclocking circles and previously, he managed to break quite a few records with the same EVGA Geforce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition graphics card so it does not come as a surprise that the same graphics card broke three new 3DMark world records. This time, Vince managed to push the GPU to a rather stunning 2200MHz on LN2, showing that EVGA GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition was certainly made for overclocking.

In addition to the EVGA Geforce GTX 980 Ti K|NGP|N Edition graphics card, the rest of the system included an Intel Core i7-5960X CPU overclocked to 5767MHz, an EVGA's X99 motherboard and 16GB of DDR4 memory.

According to the 3DMark Hall of Fame, Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido now holds the first place in 3DMark Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra benchmarks done on a single graphics card.

While overclocking the GTX 980 Ti GPU to 2200MHz is certainly an impressive result, we are cheering for Vince to push it even further.

Sapphire has launched a new version of its TriXX monitoring and overclocking software which will bring both voltage control on Fiji GPU-based graphics cards as well as an ability to overclock high bandwidth memory.

Although AMD was quite clear regarding high bandwidth memory overclocking limitations, or the lack of any overclocking when it comes to HBM, back when Radeon R9 Fury series graphics cards were launched, it appears that Sapphire found a way around it and allowed both voltage control on the Fiji GPU-based graphics cards, including Radeon R9 Fury, R9 Fury X and the R9 Nano, as well as high bandwidth memory overclocking.

The new Sapphire TriXX 5.2.1 software comes with a new user interface which offers both voltage, frequency and temperature monitoring via neat looking analog dials as well as GPU voltage and frequency, HBM frequency overclocking and fan settings. According to Sapphire, the new TriXX 5.2.1 software also supports voltage control on other Radeon R9 300 series graphics cards.

It will be quite interesting to see how far would user be able to push high bandwidth memory as well as the GPU on Radeon R9 Fury series and the R9 Nano graphics cards with new voltage and frequency overclocking settings.